The use of image producing medical examination devices enables the production of high-resolution images of an examination object, mostly within areas of a human body. For example, it is possible to carry out anatomical, morphological or functional recordings. These can represent the area recorded in two or three-dimensional images. Furthermore, the use of the so-called functional image production facilitates the portrayal of a process changing with time, such as a physiological function or a pathological process. In this way, the structure of organs and tissues is repeatedly scanned in order to carry out, for example, a dynamic examination of the movement of the heart, joints or the fluid in the brain.
Image data sets of this type can essentially be obtained using different image producing techniques available in medicine, such as sonography, computer tomography, angiography or magnetic resonance tomography.
When an image data set obtained from an image producing medical examination device is post-edited, the image data set to be post-edited is usually loaded into a post-editing software program. This software uses a number of image attributes that have to be set (parameters), in order to determine the way it is to be presented. The parameters are usually set manually using the view resulting from the image data set loaded. Post-editing software of this type may also offer standard parameter settings, which serve as a starting point for the manual view and which are permanently stored in the software. In most cases a user of the post-editing software is also able to store his/her own presettings in the post-editing software.
An example for this type of software are the VisTools, such as are outlined, for example, in the paper “Scalable Visualization Toolkits for Bays to Brains”, NPACI, Alpha Project Review Meeting, Jan. 2001, and which are a successor of the “San Diego Image Tools”, Version 3.0, 11th Oct. 1995. Here, for example, the parameters in the image view are set using the ‘imadjust function’ (image adjust).
Now standards have been developed for the patient information system for medical devices, the standards allowing data to be transmitted and saved in a heterogeneous infrastructure as is found in a clinic, a medical practice or in a medical laboratory, involving no loss of information, even if the intercommunicating appliances cannot, in part, understand the information transmitted. The availability of certain information in a standardized format for transmitting and storing is sufficient, e.g. address information, information on the data type etc.
An example of this kind of standard is the DICOM-Standard (DICOM=Digital Imaging and Communication in medicine, see, for example, “Part 1: Introduction and Overview”, PS 3.1-2000, National Electrical Manufacturers Association, 2000). The DICOM-Standard standardizes the structure of the formats and descriptive parameters for radiological images and commands for exchanging these images, and also the description of other data objects, such as image sequences, examination series and findings. The description of different methods of data compressions is also defined in the DICOM-Standard.
Roughly speaking, it differentiates between three different areas or blocks. An initial general block with a fixed definition, which is obligatory for all producers and modalities, includes instructions as to the ordering and distribution of data. Furthermore, a modality specific block is defined which is obligatory for all producers. In the case of magnetic resonance image production, for example, the parameters used for this can be found in this block (echo time, repetition time etc.). Finally there is a proprietary block that each producer can complete for his/her own purposes.